After the Lie: A gripping novel about love, loss and family secrets (14 page)

T
he bureaucracy
of the Italian wedding sucked up so much time that I’d managed to avoid Katya without trying – or lying – citing truthfully that I was buried in paperwork. Until the Wednesday before half-term when the school held an A-level options evening. I’d obviously been living in Surrey for far too long because fleetingly, I wished I was on Facebook so I could tell the whole world that every teacher was begging Jamie to do their subject for A level –
#GeniusForASon
.

Katya cornered me in the politics session while our offspring sat holding hands under the cover of Eleanor’s jumper, absorbed in their world of two. Katya ranted away. ‘Sean’s mother went very quiet when I told her that he was adamant about us not going to the reunion for his senior school’s centenary. I’m sure Sean’s hiding something from me.’

I whispered platitudes, dread spreading through my limbs. People kept turning round to glare until I was squirming in my seat with embarrassment.

When we finally got out, I made some excuse about having to rush back for Izzy. Katya shouted after us, ‘See you on Friday then, Jamie. Have a good time in Italy, Lydia. Let’s catch up when you get back.’

As soon as we got into the car, I turned to Jamie. ‘Friday? What’s that about?’

‘Oh yeah, Mum, I was going to tell you. Eleanor’s having a party and Dad said it’s all right for me to stay the night.’

I crunched the gears. ‘And when exactly was this all agreed?’

‘I don’t know. Yesterday. Because you’re in Italy, he thought it would be easier. He won’t have to wake up Izzy to come and fetch me at midnight.’

‘And neither of you thought you should discuss it with me?’

Jamie didn’t feel the need to answer that query.

I screeched into our drive and yanked up the handbrake. Then I noticed my dad’s car tucked in the corner. He didn’t generally pop in unannounced: ‘You don’t want us oldies hanging about.’ I searched my memory, to see if I’d somehow forgotten that he was coming but drew a blank. My adrenaline ratcheted up another notch in preparation for a disaster I hadn’t foreseen. My showdown with Mark over ‘partygate’ would have to wait. I pushed the front door open. ‘Hel-lo? Is everything okay?’

Thankfully, my dad was watching the
News at Ten
with Mark, a cup of coffee in hand. He pushed himself up to give me a hug, but despite the grunt of effort, he was all sparkly-eyed as though he was holding onto a secret. Of the good sort.

‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ I asked, relief coursing through me that his visit was apparently unrelated to Sean McAllister. I’d been braced for a glum hello that heralded an uphill battle to get him back to the doctor.

He clapped his hands together as though he was about to embark on a longwinded story. I brushed away the urge to hurry him along so that I could release the full force of fury festering deep in my stomach against Mark.

‘Have a seat, darling. I’ve got a little favour to ask you.’

‘Whatever it is, it’s a yes.’

He smiled and put his hand up to stop me. ‘You’d better hear what it is first. As you know, your mother keeps wanting to drag me around cities looking at dreary churches. She’s all keen to book a break in Florence because she’d been talking to that friend of yours the other week, the foreign chap.’

‘He’s not foreign, his parents are Italian, but anyway, carry on.’ I avoided looking at Mark, though I felt his curiosity.

‘As it happens, my golf club have a team going up to Scotland to play against St Andrews this weekend. Someone’s dropped out and they’ve asked me to fill in but I don’t want to leave your mother on her own. She says she’ll be fine but I wouldn’t feel right. So I was wondering if you could take her to Florence with you this weekend? She wouldn’t need to come to the wedding or anything, but she could see some of the frescoes she wants to look at…’ He winked. ‘Save me the trouble. I’ll see you right for the flights and hotel room.’

He looked so hopeful. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine anything worse than a couple of days of undiluted matriarchal wisdom.

Mark was pulling a ‘How are you going to answer that?’ face behind my dad’s back. But how could I refuse? The poor bloke had sat in prison because of me. I tried to give myself a moment to think.

‘What does Mum say?’

‘I haven’t told her. I want to surprise her.’

Despite the evil prospect of spending 24/7 times two with my mother, the tenderness that my dad still conjured up for her softened my heart. ‘Go on then. You’d better bring back the trophy.’

His old face lit up with joy, which kept my anger with Mark trapped in its box long enough for me to wave my dad off.

I was just about to give Mark both barrels of my outrage, when he said, ‘Before I forget, there was a message for you about someone called Giuseppe Bardo on the answerphone. Who’s he?’

‘He’s the translator for the wedding. What did he want?’

Mark’s face fell. ‘He’s in hospital with pneumonia.’

T
he next morning
, the terrifying reality of having two days to find an alternative translator or call off the glamorous Palazzo Vecchio wedding chiselled an extra dimension into my argument with Mark over Jamie staying at the McAllisters.

‘How could you be so stupid? They’re already all over each other, right under the teachers’ noses. At this rate, we’ll be lucky if we’re not grandparents by the time Jamie’s seventeen.’

Mark resolutely refused to back down. ‘Katya and Sean are sensible. They’ll keep an eye on the bedroom situation. Give the boy a break.’

I tried to remember if I knew anything about the layout of the upstairs of the McAllister house. I imagined Eleanor waiting until Katya and Sean were in bed, whispering down the landing to Jamie, muffling her laughter in the sleeve of her dressing gown. Actually, I bet she didn’t even own a dressing gown. Just flimsy shorts and strappy T-shirts. Did Jamie even possess a packet of condoms? That boy who not so long ago would spend hours building cranes from Lego?

My dreams of motherhood had never included an image of my son walking into Boots and flicking along the row of ribbed, cherry-flavoured or extra-sensitive Durex.

‘No. I’m not having it. I’ll phone Katya and tell her he can’t come.’

Mark put up his hand. ‘Sorry, but you are not going to embarrass Jamie like that. Or us, because the McAllisters thought they were doing us a favour. We’d just look rude.’

Mark never put his foot down. I didn’t know where to push to get my own way because he normally conceded where the children were concerned. With time ticking away, the phone ringing into the ether at the Palazzo Vecchio and my frantic emails as yet unanswered, I had to let it go and start firefighting on the Italian front. If Mark was suddenly the expert on child rearing, he’d have three days to showcase his talents without my intervention – if I managed to find an interpreter.

I couldn’t let the bride down now. I briefly imagined making the phone call: ‘Really sorry but you won’t be needing that tiara…’ No. I couldn’t let that happen. I combed through every possible solution. My thoughts flickered towards Tomaso, then away again. Since I’d bumped into him in Guildford, I’d forced myself not to respond to his texts. Deliberately going away with him to a foreign city would put me firmly back on the slippery slope.

My mother, with her disregard for anyone’s convenience other than her own, was on my doorstep before I’d had my second cup of coffee. She whirled through to the kitchen, grabbing my arm, which, in her book, was positively tactile. ‘Your father’s told me that we’re off on a little trip. I’ve made a list of all the churches I want to visit. Can you book me tickets for the Uffizi? I’ve read there are awful queues. I wonder whether I’ll be able to climb up all those steps in the Duomo? I think there are four hundred and sixty-three…’

Before she could go any further, I put my hand up. ‘At the moment, I’m not sure it’s all going to happen.’ I filled her in on Giuseppe Bardo choosing right now to do his dying duck.

My mother concertinaed her face as though I was deliberately placing obstacles between her and the reliquary housing St John the Baptist’s index finger. ‘Get that friend of yours to do it. The one from the hotel. Tomosi! He speaks Italian. Said he did interpreting.’

‘I can’t ask him.’

‘Why ever not?’ my mother asked.

‘He won’t be able to do it at such late notice. He probably wouldn’t want to trek over to Italy for such a short time. Anyway, I don’t know him well enough to ask for favours.’

I busied myself bleaching the sink as though E.coli was threatening to wipe us all out.

‘Nonsense. It’s not a favour, it’s business.’

‘I’ve left messages with the Italian tourist board in Florence and London to see if they can suggest anyone. I’m just about to call the Institute of Translation and Interpreting. I’ve still got a few options to try.’ I tried to corral some conviction into my voice.

My mother unzipped her handbag. ‘You always were such a defeatist. If you don’t ask, you don’t get. I’ll phone Tomosi for you.’

‘Don’t be silly. You can’t start phoning people you’ve met once and asking them to come to Italy with us. And he’s called Tomaso, not Tomosi.’

‘Tomaso, Tomosi, same thing,’ said the person who became incandescent when people called her Dot, or worse still, Dottie. ‘You’re the one who’s being silly.’ She was foraging in her bag, drawing out Tomaso’s business card with a flourish of triumph. ‘Now, where are my glasses?’

I slammed the bleach bottle down. ‘All right. I’ll ring him but it won’t do any good.’ I tried to find a reason to make the phone call from the other room, but my mother stood there, hands on her hips to underline that any hesitation from me would lead to her direct dialling Tomaso.

‘Tomaso, it’s Lydia. I’m here with my mother.’ I hoped he heard the warning in my voice, because if my mother got any closer, we could share a bra. I pressed the phone hard into my ear.

I explained my predicament, trying to ignore my mother, who was semaphoring and mouthing all manner of instructions as though her presence in Florence was actually a selling point.

I prepared myself for a snort of disbelief that I’d wasted my free minutes on seeing if Tomaso could help. Instead he said, ‘Serendipity. I’ve just finished inspecting a major hotel chain. I’d planned to have a few days off anyway, but for you, darling Lydia, I will fly to Italy tomorrow.’

I had my mobile pressed so hard against my head that I was in danger of cutting off the call with my chin. I walked away from my mother on the pretence of digging out a notepad from the drawer in the hallway.

I reiterated that ‘both
my mother
and I’ would be arriving on the Friday and staying in the Hotel Bonini if he wanted me to book him a room there.

‘Won’t I be sharing with you? Spoilsport.’

My mother was hovering in the doorway. I adopted my most professional, ‘just tying up the loose ends’ tone. ‘That would be extremely difficult and I don’t think it would be appropriate for this particular wedding.’

Tomaso laughed and made some comment about my sexy schoolteacher voice, until fear that his words would reach my mother’s bionic ears made me close down the conversation with a promise to email the final details.

I salved my conscience by telling myself that there wasn’t much danger of being led astray with my mother in attendance. She could yet prove a cash cow if someone could find a way to market her unique periscope/telescope talents.

Her endorsement of Tomaso and my half-truth – that I’d found someone from Surrey Business Stars – barely caused a blip on Mark’s ‘fishy coincidences’ radar.

He raised his eyebrows briefly. ‘How old is this bloke? How come he can speak Italian?’

‘He’s really young. His parents are Italian.’ I hoped I managed to make him sound about twenty-three. ‘I was really lucky to find someone who could drop everything and come straight away.’

Mark grinned. ‘Thank god for that. It’s not even a particularly mainstream language. Poor bloke, having to put up with your mother for more than an afternoon.’

My face burned at Mark’s naïve trust in me.

I tried not to think about the fact that I was going to spend almost three days in close proximity to Tomaso. But I couldn’t ignore it. Even when I was packing, I’d come over all
Room With A View
and was attempting the ‘In my small way, I’m a woman of the world’ vibe. I’d squashed everything into a little bag rather than our cumbersome family case, as though I was a seasoned traveller for whom a hop over to Italy was no more challenging than a bus ride to Brighton.

My mother arrived with a case big enough to travel in herself. She frowned at my compact bag and dedicated a large part of the journey to the airport to asking me if I’d got enough warm clothes. Once she’d exhausted that concern, she turned her attention to whether I’d be smart enough for the wedding. The sooner she trotted off on a tour of the churches, the better we were going to get along.

Tomaso had flown out the day before to complete all the legal formalities. By the time we arrived at the Hotel Bonini, having negotiated endless ‘Are you sure this is the right direction/train/cab?’ queries from my mother, I barely had the energy for any emotion – excitement, guilt or otherwise. On the upside, I had learnt some marvellously rude hand gestures during the taxi ride to the hotel that I was itching to share with Jamie.

But Tomaso strolling into reception acted like a shot of caffeine on every female in the room. I bet he hadn’t had to try to attract the receptionist’s attention while she finished polishing her desk.

Tomaso cemented his position in my mother’s affections with compliments and cheek kissing. ‘
Bella Dorothea
, I said Italy would suit you.’

I shook his hand rather formally and tried not to think about the way Mark waved us off into the cab, with an innocent ‘No running off with any Italian gigolos.’ Nothing would happen anyway. Tomaso and I were just two friends, with honesty between us. Plus one night of sex and a couple of hours of kissing. Which, Tomaso had assured me, against eighteen years of marriage, was such a tiny percentage as to barely count.

Tomaso led the way up to our rooms, more alpha than I’d noticed before, barking out orders to the lad who helped us with the luggage. It was so relaxing not to have to scrabble about wondering whether a one-euro tip was an insult or five would mark me out as an overgenerous fool against a background of the kids arguing over who was having which (identical) bed.

The bellboy stopped outside a room at the end of the corridor. Tomaso grabbed hold of my mother’s case and handed it to him. He turned to my mother. ‘Dorothea…I asked for a room right at the end for you, where it’s quiet. Florence is beautiful but quite noisy. You get settled in, then we’ll all go to my favourite restaurant for lunch, if that suits.’

She patted his hand. ‘You are a treasure, Tomosi. Lydia is lucky to have found you.’

I left my mother to unpack. Tomaso winked at me and whispered, ‘I swapped the rooms round. You’re opposite me.’